What
was the name of the small town that Sam Chapparell shoots
the sheriff in ? (Answer at bottom of the page)

Thanks to Mikel Midnight for
his assistance with this page.

A hero dressed in a blue business
suit, wearing a fedora and a domino mask... sounds like
The Spirit? Well... no, it was Midnight!

The character
first appeared in Smash Comics
#18 (dated January 1941), published by Quality Comics,
who would start reprints of The Spirit in the pages of
their Police Comics
over a year later!

(An early
adventure by Jack Cole)

The publisher
of Quality Comics - Everett "Busy" Arnold had
worked with Eisner in selling The Spirit for the Comic
Book Section to the newspaper syndicate and worked as
manager for the strip during the pre-War and War years.
The main writer and artist was Jack Cole on the early
years of Midnight
- he would also work on The Spirit as well as his famous
creation for Police Comics...
Plastic Man.

As Eisner
commented years later:"Arnold
got the idea that since the war was coming and I was
going to be drafted ... he wanted to have somebody, in
case I got killed, to replace the Spirit. Because I owned
the Spirit and he knew if anything happened to me he
couldn't continue it."

The alterego
of Midnight
was Dave Clark, a radio announcer who unlike The Spirit
would use a gun when required on many of his adventures.
Further information about the character can be found on
Mikel Midnight's excellent Midnight page, which can be
found here (this page is associated with the
roleplaying All-Star MUSH and contains information related
only to the game).

After a couple
of years Midnight became the cover feature on Smash
Comics (from #28 on), and lasted in
the title until the comic was cancelled with #85 (dated
October 1949).

The character
became part of the DC Comics' empire when Quality ceased
in 1956, although Midnight
had to wait until 1984 before reappearing, this time in
Roy Thomas' All-Star Squandron
series. The character would get his own 19 page story
retelling his origin in Secret
Origins #28 published in 1988
(which featured some good Gil Kane artwork).
Unfortunately, since then the character seems to have
disappeared and very little of the stories have been
reprinted.